SELF-CARE RETREAT SERIES
Self-Care of the Soul for Every Season:
Tending to Our Inner Life
Our life’s journey and the quest to become truly whole, to find the essence of self and soul is much like the continual cycle of the seasons. In many ways we are physically, emotionally and spiritually linked to the seasons which each have their own vitality and attraction. The seasons, as Parker Palmer says, are “a wise metaphor for the movement of life. The seasonal metaphor deepens our understanding of others. Seeds move through their life stages in an endless cycle of seasons—and that eternal cycle reminds us that the journey never ends. Our lives participate in the myth of everlasting return: we circle around and spiral down, never finally answering the questions “Who am I?” and “Whose am I?” but, in the words of Rilke, “living the questions throughout our lives.”
Each season teaches us something about the way to live and shows us how we can continually find new opportunities for growth and transformation by embracing every aspect, the light and the dark, the loss and the gains of living each day and each experience to its fullest.
Just as nature restores the earth by repeating the cycle of season, we too are ever changing, evolving and experiencing the cycle of our own human seasons over and over again as we learn the lessons and ecology of life. This is soulful work which calls us to go deeper with each experience and each passing season. If we are attentive and careful to nurture the soul, we can begin to discern the leadings of our own inner teacher and to understand the terrain of our inner life.
Beginning this Spring, you are invited to attend a day long retreat four times in the coming year. Each retreat will focus on the special characteristics of the season and the lessons we can learn focusing on self-care of the soul, self-renewal and the creation of a community of support for rediscovering and deepening the ground of our being. The more passionate and dedicated we are about our work and our life, the more vital it is that we take the time to renew ourselves-- to reconnect with the core and deepest meaning of our life.
These gatherings are open to anyone interested in caring for the wellbeing of their inner nature and personal growth and will offer an opportunity for:
Self-awareness
Self-renewal
Communal support
Sharing experiences
Gaining clarity
Developing a way forward
Dates: Spring (April 5), Summer (June 7), Fall (October 4), Winter (February 7)
Time: 9:00AM to 4:00PM
Location: The Bay Center, 482 Chesapeake Drive, White Stone, VA
Cost: $85 per participant per retreat (includes the cost of refreshments, materials and lunch); Only $300 for all four retreats.
Facilitator: Claire J. Salkowski, M.S. is the Principal Consultant for C. J. Consulting and Services, a field consultant for the Center for Guided Montessori Studies, as an ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) practitioner and a Montessori educator she worked as a school founder, teacher, administrator, accreditation specialist, teacher trainer, professional mediator and retreat facilitator both nationally and internationally for over 40 years.
Ms. Salkowski was also the Director of the Montessori Education Program at Delaware State University and Mediation and Educational Programs at the North Baltimore Center of Mosaic Community Services. She served with Montessori, Quaker, Restorative Justice and other non-profit organizations and now serves on the board for Friends School of Baltimore and the Bay Center.
Claire is a certified facilitator for retreats and Circles of Trust with the Center for Renewal and Wholeness and has led retreats and peacemaking circles for over ten years. Her passion for peace education, conflict resolution and lifelong learning has informed her work and writing throughout her career and her belief in the importance of personal growth and spiritual development leads her to work with others in this next stage in life.
SPRING
April 5, 2025 | 9AM to 4PM
Spring is the season of rebirth and renewal. In this first of our seasonal retreats, we will focus on the theme of “planting seeds” and emerging life. As birds return from their winter homeland to repair their nests and gardeners begin to tend their gardens in preparation for the early crops and the first blooms of the season we turn our attention to the work of tending our own inner garden. This retreat is designed to help us become more intentional and mindful as we move into the season of rebirth, and the promised feast of life in whatever form that may take.
What we all have in common is the need to take some time to care for ourselves so that we can cultivate the best of who we are to whatever kind of work we do in the world and to those whose lives we touch. So often we are continually giving to others, but we seldom take the time to tend and attend to our own deepest needs. This will be an opportunity to take time for yourself to refresh and renew your spirit as we consider the seeds of new beginnings in our life and reflect on what matters most to us in our work and our journey through life. We will gather to learn from and with each other within the restorative nature of the Circle and the power of a reflective retreat.
Date: April 5, 2025 | Registration Deadline: March 25, 2025
Time: 9:00AM to 4:00PM
Location: The Bay Center, 482 Chesapeake Drive, White Stone, VA
Cost: $85 per participant per retreat (includes the cost of refreshments, materials and lunch); Only $300 for all four retreats.
Facilitator: Claire J. Salkowski, M.S.
SUMMER
June 7, 2025 | 9AM to 4PM
In summer we experience the utter abundance of life as white clouds drift in azure skies and the sun warms us with appreciation and the penetrating heat of the season. Flowers bloom and grow in excess and the gardens and woods are overflowing with life and a vibrant energy. Our energy and time outdoors expands and we relinquish old ways that prevented us from realizing our full potential. In this steady state of plenty we can be truly present and are fed on more levels than we know. We need to embrace the abundance of life and recognize that abundance is “a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole,” as Parker Palmer says.
In both small and large groups, we will explore the ways to live in harmony with abundance and nurture the beauty of soul amidst the creation of community. We will work to recognize this lesson from the natural world in the hopes that we might find ways to transform the human world in which we each exist and “give ourselves to the abiding and abundant grace of our common life.”
Date: June 7, 2025 | Registration Deadline: May 25, 2025
Time: 9:00AM to 4:00PM
Location: The Bay Center, 482 Chesapeake Drive, White Stone, VA
Cost: $85 per participant per retreat (includes the cost of refreshments, materials and lunch); Only $300 for all four retreats.
Facilitator: Claire J. Salkowski, M.S.
FALL
October 4, 2025 | 9AM to 4PM
Autumn is a season of great splendor, and plentiful harvest, but it is also a season of decline and decay as we watch the days grow shorter and nights become colder as we edge toward the stillness and depths of winter. In the Fall we recognize that the growth of summer has slowed and there is a letting go of summer’s amazing abundance, but the seeds of new life are scattered for a season still yet to come. As Joyce Rupp explains autumn is also a wonderful metaphor for the transformation that takes place in the human heart. It speaks of connection and yearning, wisdom and aging, transformation and surrender, emerging shadows, and most of all mystery. We are invited to let go, to yield, to let things move into new forms as the earth itself models these changes.
Date: October 4, 2025 | Registration Deadline: September 25, 2025
Time: 9:00AM to 4:00PM
Location: The Bay Center, 482 Chesapeake Drive, White Stone, VA
Cost: $85 per participant per retreat (includes the cost of refreshments, materials and lunch); Only $300 for all four retreats.
Facilitator: Claire J. Salkowski, M.S.
WINTER
February 7, 2026 | 9AM to 4PM
Winter can be a demanding and barren season, but it is also a season of great beauty, stillness and solitude. It is a reminder that dormancy and rest are essential to life and all living things. For in winter, like nature herself, we too need to rest and renew as we prepare for the coming of a new season and new life. In retreat we are invited to reflect on the seasons of our life and the seeds we have been sowing. We are asked to be intentional about what we want to sow in the new year and what we hope will bear fruit in the coming season.
Date: February 7, 2026 | Registration Deadline: January 25, 2026
Time: 9:00AM to 4:00PM
Location: The Bay Center, 482 Chesapeake Drive, White Stone, VA
Cost: $85 per participant per retreat (includes the cost of refreshments, materials and lunch); Only $300 for all four retreats.
Facilitator: Claire J. Salkowski, M.S.
Our process is rooted in the belief that our service to others as elders or at any season in our life flows from the identity and integrity of the true self and invites us to reclaim our own being and clarity of purpose.
On this year’s journey we will engage in work and exercises using what Parker Palmer calls “third things” such as poetry, art, and movement. We will explore our thoughts, emotions and behaviors as we take time to journal in stillness and in the community of others leading us into spiritual understandings that enrich our lives and guide us on our path to wholeness.
Join us in these Circles of Trust and experience the paradox of the individual and community, knowing that we must each do our own work which is far too hard to do alone. With gratitude and grace, we gather in community to support each other through the seasons of our life.
As we build our community throughout the year and gain the wisdom of self-knowledge, we plan to include the discernment process of Clearness Committees. Originating within the Quaker tradition they allow an individual who wishes to thoughtfully examine a personal issue or make a weighty decision the opportunity to be the “focus person” while a “committee” of several others listen and ask open, honest questions. Both focus person and committee members share a profound experience in this rare way of supporting another human being together in community.